Who are you?

This question of where were you on 9/11 keeps popping up today. I was at work. I watched the terrible events unfold on a big screen TV in the conference room. I knew my life would never be the same.

We had already been through the Murrah Building bombing here in Oklahoma City in 1995. That was enough large-scale, man-made tragedy for me to witness in this lifetime. 9/11 eclipsed that horror on a massive scale. It was a crystallizing event that changed the way I looked at life.

The last eight years have been a journey from corporate employee to real estate agent to artist/gardener/educator. It’s been a journey complete with wrong turns and lost luggage. Most of all it has been a journey towards living an authentic life of peace, simplicity, and justice. Not an easy journey in a society enamored of celebrity, wealth, and power.

I, like everyone else who was old enough on that day, remember where I was. But these days I’m more interested in remembering where I am and where I’m going. I believe it is the changes wrought in us by such events that propel us forward into a life lived more honestly. So maybe I would ask, Who were you on that day and who are you now?